By Walter Broeckx
Arsenal team at the start: Leno, Maitland-Niles, Sokratis, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Torreira, Xhaka, Mkhitaryan, Iwobi, Aubameyang, Lacazette
On the beach: Cech, Koscielny, Mavrapanos, Guendouzi, Elneny, Willock, Nketiah
A first dangerous moment in the Arsenal penalty area after a free kick but we can clear. Oliver showing his colour early on with a soft booking against Maitland-Niles for a foul in side the Leicester half. And that after Oliver missed a foul on Aubameyang just outside the Leicester penalty area. Knowing Oliver I expect him to give a soft penalty for Leicester and send one Arsenal player off. (written after 8 minutes) One of the most loyal servants of Riley in the last years. Torreira is fouled and then he gets the studs on his chest of teh fouling player. Oliver sees nothing…. Ndidi plants his studs against the shin of Xhaka and Oliver finally gives a foul in favour of Arsenal after some 12 minutes. And a yellow card for a dangerous kick. A sharp cross from Leicester forces Leno to make a double stop. 0-0 after 15 minutes.
A good attack from Arsenal after 22 minutes with Iwobi giving a cross to Lacazette but he cant get his shot between the goal posts. But Leicester much more dangerous and Leno wit a few good interventions and an important stop on a low shot. Ndidi with a header after the corner and Leno with a great reaction save and he claws the ball from under the crossbar. Still 0-0 after 30 minutes.
A golden chance for Arsenal as Iwobi is put in space in front of Schmeichel by a good pass from Aubameyang but the Leicester keeper can stop the left footed shot from our striker. As predicted Oliver takes his chance and sends Maitland-Niles off after a sceond yellow card after another soft yellow card after 37 minutes. For the first time I see Emery angry about the refs. And rightfully so. But I predicted it after 5 minutes. Based on our ref reviews and our knowledge. Oliver you are becoming a joke in Arsenal matches. Leno with a good stop on a shot from Vardy. But to be honest I have given up on this joke league and PGMO for the moment. We know what is going to happen with certain refs even before the match. Oh and don’t worry Oliver will give a penalty to Leicester at some stage. Even my match commentator found the sending off a joke at half time. Rightfully so but it seems clear that the PGMO directive is to stop Arsenal from getting in the CL. 0-0 after 45 minutes of PGMO joke officiating.
Koscielny comes in after 45 minutes for Iwobi. Mustafi plays right back and Kos goes in the centre. Leno with a good stop on a diverted cross. Arsenal every now and then trying to break away from under the pressure from Leicester. Oliver waiting to give a penalty for Leicester. Koscielny with a good interception on a cross towards Vardy. A cross finds Tielemans who heads the ball in and 1-0 after 58 minutes.
Arsenal try to react but the low cross from Aubameyang only finds Schmeichel. Two fouls within seconds from Leicester players worthy of a yellow card are ignored by the ref one even where the assistant waved his flag. Sokratis then gets a yellow card and finally Ricardo gets a yellow card for one of those fouls. The other just escaped Mr. Oliver. Who then goes to have a word with Emery: here a transcript: Oliver: ” Get used to it this is how we f*ck Arsenal over here. Wenger knows all about it”. Time to cover his tracks and Chilwell gets a yellow card. Tielemans with a curling shot for Leicester but it went just wide. Mkhitaryan leaves the field and Guendouzi comes on. Leno with 3 stops within seconds. He sure had a great match today. Vardy with some attempts to kick against Sokratis but Oliver misses it. A Leicester player kicking the ball away after a foul but no card. After 78 minutes Nketiah comes in for Lacazette.
Sokratis blocks an effort from Vardy so Leno can pick up the ball. Guendouzi with a good defensive run cutting out a counter from Leicester after Arsenal had a corner. Nketiah pushes a Leicester defender. Luckily the ref doesn’t card him. Chilwell with a tackle from behind but no second yellow card for him. Mcguire clears just in front of Nketiah and then they stop Arsenal for offside. The ball goes over the top from Schmeichel and Vardy can score after he first hit the cross bar. 2-0 after 86 minutes. 4 minutes of extra time. Leno with a great stop once again on a Leicester counter. Leicster score another in the extra-extra time to make it 3-0 by Vardy.
Oliver made life easy for Leicester by giving two soft yellow cards against Maitland-Niles and make us play almost an hour with 10 man. Doing what the PGMO told him to to. Arsenal gave another bleak away performance obviously not helped by the antics of Oliver.
At Brighton Miedema has put us one up with a great strike from the edge of the 18 yard box which gave the Brighton keeper no chance,
Interestingly the referee is Michael Oliver’s wife.
aha it was to be predicted Niles comes off with two vey soft yellows, Arsenal supporters can whine all they can about our team, but you simply cannot win games if the the game is that tilted, rigged, its just awful and var is not gonna change that I m affraid
yes even the dilomatic Emery is finally going nuts, and understandibly so.
poor guy, poor us, loosing appetite for the premier league this way
How much blatant can it be?
And I agree VAR won’t change anything as long as there is a corrupted organisation behind
Niles will not be missed.An average player who shouldnt be anywhere near our first 11.Wouldnt make the subs bench in any of the other top 6 teams and just shows how far we have regressed in the last 15 years.
nick, he didn’t play much last year….
Oliver doing a good job for the PGMO
I wouldnt call winning the FA Cup 3 times during Wenger’s last years regress.
Half an hour played in Brighton and Katie McCabe has made it two nil with a deft lob over the keeper. One hand on the WSL trophy.
Ben didn’t you know that winning the FA cup is no trophy when Arsenal win it?
1st half possession stats; 73% Leicester, 27% arsenal. Before the red, it was 74%:26%. Are we that bad today?
We shouldn’t be picking on our young players like Maitland-Niles. He has done a good job for us several times this season. These two yellow cards were soft and Michael Oliver is a terrible, biased referee. That is the agenda.
Leicester 9shots. 5 on target, 4off. Arsenal 3shots, 1 on target, 2off. Stats from goal.com
Lucy Oliver in charge at Brighton is little better than her husband. Brighton fouls being ignored and perfectly good Arsenal ones penalised. She was poor last time I saw her in an Arsenal game as well. Still two nil at halftime.
Mike Mike and Micky are taking the Michael out of English Football and English Football fans.
totally agree @Pat
imo Niles is a talented and fine player, and imo supporting players and the team will help them more than slugging them off
Unfortunately the PigMob is making itself the focus of an AFC match once again. Drat, now they’ve scored. Just what the big Mike ordered.
nonetheless: I think Iwobi might get some help in finishing. He does shank a lot in front of goal.
(I refer to the one golden chance before halftime)it would have changed the complexion of the game
Leicester shots 14; 9 on target, 5off. Arsenal shots 4; 1 on target, 3 off. Stats from goal.com
60 minutes gone at Brighton and no further goals. Arsenal managing the game well and sniffing out Brighton’s limited attacking threat (they have only 5 home goals this season).
Possession 71% Leicester, 29%_arsenal. Stats say they’re much better than we’ve been today.
Studs to the chest should be known as “a Choudhury” from now on. I don’t think it was intentional, though, but we can’t call it “an Oliver” because there are too many things we could call that.
69 minutes in at Brighton and Beth Mead with a screamer from 25 yards. We are the Champions!!!’n
this arsenal team isn’t top six material.looking for top six and you’ve been second best for at least 9 consecutive games.thats not good enough (even though we won some?)
Danielle van de Donk makes it four!
That’s ok. Us supporters will carry on supporting. You toddle off and support it team that satisfies your need to be associated with glory.
Wow! Hattrick of 3goals conceded.
Just waiting for the “Flunden” lads to get on their social media websites and blogs and lambast individual Arsenal players with their vitriolic rhetoric! (Indeed, we already have met one in an earlier comment on UA.) Just waiting for a lack of National media sites in commenting on the poor decisions of the ‘opaque’ PGMOL in this match. An odd comment from one or two about the red card perhaps, but nothing more concerning the nature of the tackling of certain Leicester players including stamping and strong arm tactics. Once again it is as if such teams have been instructed to hit Arsenal hard because the officials will not react in an adverse way.
The team needs total support for the forthcoming Europa cup game. I do not see 15 years of regression in this club. I do see a comment based on frustration and a belief system being utilised without any apparent investigation or use of evidence in support. The Flunden lads live, OK?
Its a sad state of affairs when we can predict a result when you see who the ref is Moss,Atkinson,Oliver etc. all robots that follow the same line let a team kick ARSENAL around the pitch from the start but once a gunner even thinks about fouling give him a yellow at least . how many times have we seen Dermot the ref has a hard job Gallagher spew out the same rubbish when its too late.
Arsenal Women celebrating a thoroughly deserved WSL Crown wirb an emphatic Four Nil win at Brighton. Our first for seven years and a triumph over adversity when at times we only had 10 fit first team players.
Well done Arsenal
[sarcasm]
Nice to see the medja is still being spineless over PGMO.
[/sarcasm]
Congratulations to the womens team!
Toooo many negative comments here, and not enough positive.
too bad. next time better. COYG!
Nothing about today’s game to be positive about.
Our passing was abysmal, even before AMN was sent off.
It seems smacking a player in the face in the penalty box is no foul, as is kicking them in the chest.
Surely, if there can be a foul for a player mistiming his challenge then there must be for one following in with a kick even though there is momentum in respect of both.
Poor Tereira was kicked around during the whole game and received no protection from Oliver.
Another record goes.
I hope we have no positive records against Valencia.
Just not good enough. Despite our excuses which we have gotten used to since the Wenger era.
Was there a case for offside against Vardy for the 2nd goal. He appears to me in an offside position beyond Leno before he becomes active for the 2nd phase with Sokratis on the line and Leno possibly playing him offside.
Oliver was by far the best Leicester player and he easily qualified for the “PGMO Riley Cheating” final.
Btw, I can’t see it in Walter’s report… Am I the only one who saw Torreira elbowed in Leicester box without any referees reaction?
Torreira studs in the chest from Choudhury, elbow in face from Evans plus a penalty box hand ball which although accidental might have been given (will next season under rule change). Not our day TBH.
Both Souness & Alex Scott agreed on how soft both Ainsley’s yellow cards were. I’m not sure if yellow cards will be reviewed under VAR in the same way as reds will be.
2 other points, did you notice the third goal was scored well after the 4 minutes injury time was played,?another bit of biased refereeing, I know it didn’t matter a jot about the result but I bet if it was Arsenal on the attack he Oliver would have blown up dead on time. Also why were Arsenal left with so many away games at the end of the season? Ok the Wolves game was late because they were in the semi final of the cup. Was the fact Tottenham were allowed to delay their home programme because their new ground was not ready for the start of the season ( it was never going to be) which meant we had to play more home games to facilitate Tottenham, which has given us the log jam of away games at season end.
More PGMO madness.
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/football-league/leeds-aston-villa-watch-fight-brawl-video-john-terry-marcelo-bielsa-red-card-efl-a8890041.html
Ben
28/04/2019 at 12:52 pm
I wouldnt call winning the FA Cup 3 times during Wenger’s last years regress.
….Spot on.
WalterBroeckx
28/04/2019 at 12:53 pm
Ben didn’t you know that winning the FA cup is no trophy when Arsenal win it?
….Exactly.
But wait a minute, at least the EL might be. Alan Smith today:
“(despite Arsenal probably missing out on top 4)…..if Arsenal win the Europa League it will be a asuccesful season”
Really?
Dont remember Smith or any other of the naysayers refering to any one of our 3 FA Cup winning seasons as being ‘a successful season’.
Still, seeing as Spurs dont even have to win anything to be ‘succesful’ is does get a little confusing.
I wonder how many other of you all regarded both commentators on Sky as being so biased in favour of Leicester it became positively offensive.
Their joy whenever Leicester scored was more than effusive.
Clearly, Alan Smith feels more of an allegiance to Leicester than the club where he actually won something.
The truth is they were by far the better team and we were awful, even before the sending off.
That we could hardly string 3 passes together was evident throughout the match.
Was it deliberate in order to fool Valencia or just symptomatic of the decline over the 2nd half of the season?
jjgsol
“Was it deliberate in order to fool Valencia”
LOL
Maybe they’ll put out their under 15’s.That would be handy.
I see we’ve lost our GD advantage over Chelsea and sit in 5th spot still, but with two games to play and two points behind 4th is still on.
BHA looking to avoid relegation is going to be tough, but I think four points are likely which is a bit of an ask, but the way results are going right now…who knows?
Gary Neville still making a tit of himself.
The tackle on Sanchez comes in. It looks late, it looks bad. Atkinson waves play on indicating he got the ball.
Neville: The ref was in a great position.
Tylor: As he always is.
Latter.
Neville: He definitely got the ball.
Now we see the replay.
Neville: He didn’t get the ball. He was miles away.
We move on.
No contrition from Neville.
No critisism for Atkinson, who, despite being in a ‘great position’ got yet another big decision terribly wrong.
Same old same old, the refs can do no wrong, unless of course they give something to us.
Anyway on a slightly better note a draw at OT means a win against Brighton and we at least take it to the last day.
On a slightly frusttrating note the draw at OT shows just how costly not beating Palace at home was. If we had won that all we’d of needed to do was win our last 2 games and that would of been top 4 sorted. Grrrr
I’m not going to start knocking Emery because I like the guy, but we really should of played our absolute strongest team in the Palace game and gone all out for it. This is not hindsight, I thought that before the game.
Still, I’m not the manager and he knows his players and what he has to do, so he must of had his reasons, but frustrating none the less.
MOTD showed how bad the officiating of PGMOL is. It also highlighted the cheating of professional players to get opponents booked & sent off.
The question is what is the FA going to do. Please email the FA and bring MOTD to their notice. Also bring the fact that their officiating choice is an absolute shambles.
Late in the night I’m looking at the video of the match… 71 mn, Torreira elbowed in face from Evans. The Sky pundit (sorry, I don’t know his name) talking about the replay : “Well… it’s an arm across the face, more than… an elbow”.
Actually, what I can see : it’s an arm AND an elbow accross the face.
Anyway, since when the rule is “if it’s by using an arm and not an elbow, then you can hit your opponent in the face to bring him down and prevent him to touch the ball in the box. In this case the penalty sould not be given”?
Getting hit in the face is Torreira’s own fault for not being as tall as most opposing players.
_ according to the commentator.
I was quite happy when the Spuds lost , thinking that we could finally move up and close to them in the table .
Dang! Was I way wrong ! Only consolation was that our other two closest rivals also dropped points .
rondejonge :- re Iwobi needs to learn to use his instep to hit a ball rather than opening his body and sidefooting everytime .He telegraphs his intention so that keepers can anticipate where to go.
Oliver’s performance was entirely predictable and coupled with our teams lacklustre performance , AMN’s sending off I predicted 2 nought at half time which would have been right except for his generosity to allow Leicester to finish their move at the finish.